WASHINGTON — Marvin President tried to quit drinking for over 10 years. Even a hospital detoxification program after he suffered serious liver damage didn’t leave the South Carolina man sober for long.
Half of alcoholics who undergo treatment relapse at least once, many repeatedly. Now the government is fighting that grim statistic by launching a major nationwide study to see if novel combinations of therapies will better treat patients like President — essentially hitting alcoholism with a one-two punch.
Does a standard medication or an experimental pill work better, or do they work best added together? What about medication plus different types of psychotherapy? Is intense psychotherapy necessary or is a cheaper kind OK?
The National Institutes of Health is hunting 1,375 volunteers to test the different treatment combinations, for free, at 11 universities around the country.
It’s unlikely just one will be the magic bullet — but because no two people are alike, researchers hope to uncover combinations that particularly suit certain alcoholics’ vulnerabilities so they get better help than they do today.
“The goal is to cure,” says Dr. Enoch Gordis, director of the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “We can’t do that yet. … But every day a patient is abstinent and sober is a big step.”
Health officials estimate some 8 million Americans are alcoholics — they have strong cravings to drink, experience withdrawal, and need increasing amounts to feel satisfied. Another 6 million abuse alcohol but aren’t deemed physically dependent on it.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
